One Star Boss: A Mecha/Virtual Reality LitRPG

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The Overdrive Corporation has a problem. The esports company's proprietary AI is full of idiotic glitches. Professional mappers are making the virtual reality Mech fighting game's painstakingly designed bosses look like complete and utter fools.

The company's bombastic CEO, The Mechanical King, has come up with a truly unique solution. Instead of fixing the AI, he'll just hire human players to act as bosses behind the scenes.

When Jason was a kid fresh out of high school, playing as an Overdrive boss - even a weak early game boss - sounded like a dream come true. He dreamed of becoming a pro gamer and was addicted to competition. He loved the idea of battling skilled opponents all day and honing his mech piloting skills.

Two years later, an ill-fated clash against one of the game's most prominent whales sends his life into a tailspin.

Follow his adventures as he and his partner, the cyborg dragon Red Minerva, fight to leave his humble beginnings to stand among the best fighters on the server.

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2021
Author: Ryantang203

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 3.7/ 5.0
Followers: 290
Views: 223,723

Reviews

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Community Reviews(8)

MostRandomDudeRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The entire premise is a guy who's stuck at a dead end job as a pilot for a pretty weak boss. This premise is ok and the story so far is looking pretty good. However I believe it could have more other than just the mechs because it's pretty much the main point so far. It hasn't gone much into things such as planets and colonies however, I presume this is coming up later in the story.
Dante HillRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
As a fan of mecha and litrpg and fan of the original series seeing this new story is refreshing and quite a change from the other protagonists style.
The story is ramping up and liking the interactions between the main characters and him finding his path. I really enjoyed the tournament of assassins.
kanenod007Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
i like mecha storys, an the vr add an interesting way of creating fights, plus a bio dragon mecha sounds nice. dragon cyborgs mecha seem is a nice, with him being a boss great ideas for fight could happen.
hope the story goes on awhile, maybe a arc of him in a large scale war map playing on one side. Or later on a dungoen building one making his own boss stage. Could have space battles, or add a pair of grunt drones as his back up in a mission maybe.
Nightkeeper2013Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
This story is extremely well written in all aspect world building motivation detail everything, it is a pleasure to have such a complete story available the only thing I can say against the story is the tags it has but that might be just my own bias. Litrpg in my mind is like the idea that a system governs the characters life in all aspects like in system apocalypse stories but all in all that is personal bias. As a professorial LIT tech responsible for the order purchase and recommendation of new books for my library I would put this book on my library purchase list it is that good.
WiggyRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
Man. I really wanted to like this story. The premise is interesting, the game setting seems like it has a lot of potential and room for creative ideas, the red Minerva seems like a cool bot. But the protagonist is absolutely insufferable. Like, the first fight I was fine, it established his skill and knowledge of the game. Second fight showed his ability to plan ahead and his mechs potential and capabilities. Fight 3 in a row with now breaks of him being utterly outclassed and pulling out some million to one path to victory nonsense I was pretty tired of it. Him going on and on about how he's so good and only loses because people bring op equipment that 1 shots him got pretty old. Him going on a rant in his head about how dare the world care more about people skills and not his 1337 gamer skillz pretty much cemented my dislike for him. I kinda wanted to see him winning due to good planning and having a good mech instead of an endless parade of miraculous wins, but I couldn't push through enough I guess.
DreydfaerRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
The synopsis of this story sells us the picture of a rather generic mecha fighter with a small twist, but delivers something unpalatable. The main character in this story is so laughably established that it ruins any sort of desire to continue reading, and I'll explain why.
The main idea of the synopsis, the event that drives the entire premise to exist, is that a VR mecha fighting game replaced all of its bosses with real people due to their AI having atrocious performance against real people. In order to have progression in a game, you need to have bosses that range in ability - in this case, starting at one star. Setting aside the fact that apparently one star bosses should actually just get stomped on by players most of the time, and so the AI should still be piloting them, we are thus introduced to our MC.
This MC seems to find it absolutely unacceptable to fight as a one star boss, the job they specifically wanted to do. This is fine - people dislike their jobs all the time, and either do them anyway with dissatisfaction or quit. The problem comes into play that they view the fact that they are fighting at unacceptably high standards for one star boss as everyone elses problem, not theirs. We are told of multiple situations (and the opening fight we see corraborates this) where MC actually holds hostage players in impossibly long fights because they don't want to lose. Losing is literally their job as an introductory boss.
Their manager approaches them in a cartoonishly agressive way, but then brings out cold hard facts and fantastic backing data to show that they literally cost the company more money than they are worth, and even then still gives MC the chance to make things right by just simply playing at the standard of a regular boss against a player that has put more money than god into the game. There should not even be a question about whether you can beat this player; we get paragraph after paragraph explaining that this was the meta PVP mech for a lon
RalmonRoyal Road
★ 1.0
Story Overall: 1★
If you want Mechas make each other explode for the sake of it, ala Micheal Bay's Transformers; where character have no purpose other than to make destruction and explosion happen; with lazy repetetive verbose jap/ch webnovel level writing to match (where stuff are stretched to last for several chapters); and constant info dumps about weaponry and skills and whatnot; then this is the story for you.
Otherwise, a hard pass.
Style: 1★
Pretty terrible. It is so basic and artless. The flow of the writing feels like you are eating a cactus. Constant infodump in every chapter. It is really a pain to read through.
Needs major rewriting.
Story : 1★
Story doesn't exist. The story is pretty much about mecha fighting each other ala Micheal Bay's Transformers, but without all the eye candy or even an excuse plot.
There isn't even tension here because this is all a game. At least with something like Micheal Bay's Transformers, the fate of the world is at stake. Here, our protagonist just won't level up, and he could just try again.
The game itself doesn't provide anyting interesting. With stories like this, at least the game provide an overarching narrative the players would follow and interesting details interwoven in it. This have none of that.
If you find that enteresting despite, go for it. Otherwise, it isn't worth a bother.
Grammar : 5★
Good. But that doesn't say anything since the writing is pretty basic in its structure, grammar and vocabulary. It shouldn't be hard to edit and proofread.
Character : 1★
If you can call these stick puppets characters. Their backstory is tacked on and has no relevance to the story whatsoever (not that there is any story in the first place). Their dialogue and interactions are stilted and stiff more akin to computer prompts than what actual people would do.
There is just no character here. They don't exist to be characters but for the mechas to move and battle each other. Not different from the dolls children bang together to
VolmaaralRoyal Road
★ 1.0
This was... unpleasant, to read through (I reached chapter 40 before surrendering). The very beginning wasn't too bad, worryingly verbose, but I figured that was just a symptom of being the beginning of the story... unfortunately, it is like that the ENTIRE story. And on top of that, the logic behind the story is fundamentally flawed. See, the corporation had implemented an AI. But due to the game's complexity, the cost to develop an AI capable of properly handling these mechs and fighting players was absurd, and the one they had was insufficient for the task. To avoid the crippling cost of making the complex AI they require, they instead hired players. A novel idea, but they somehow intended to keep it secret. Even with probably HUNDREDS of such players, if not thousands. ...yeah, no, that "secret" would be exposed in a week.
Anyway, these players play as the enemies of the game, primarily as Bosses, which are ranked by stars. One Star being, as said in the summary, the weakest. Which is so weak, that they are SUPPOSED to lose. ...which makes it strange that they even hire people to perform as those weak bosses, since an AI, even their "flawed" one, would be perfect for such a role! They're wasting money on hiring people for those positions, when they started hiring people to avoid the waste of money from getting a better AI! It...makes no sense, logically.
Aside from that, however, we come to our MC. He was hired as a One Star Boss. He has spent years playing as it, but doesn't like losing, see. Even when it takes HOURS to win, he draws it out, with his mecha being so pathetically weak that he literally can't penetrate the enemy armor without performing what is essentially torture once he incapacitates them. He gets multiple complaints due to his actions, and his own boss even tells him outright that he's supposed to lose, a notion the MC scorns.
Why is he still in the job, you ask? To make money playing his favorite game, of course, and also for